20Bloodless blossoms of death, leaves that have sprung never against the light.

21Nay then, sleep if thou wilt; love is content; what should he do to weep?

22Sweet was love to thee once; now in thine eyes sweeter than love is sleep.

Notes

1] Swinburne wrote John Nichol on Nov. 29, 1872, that his own choriambics are "done rather on the model (metrical and otherwise) of Catullus, -- `Alpheus immemor,' etc. which I have always thought one of the sweetest and most intense even of his poems -- rather than of Horace `Tu me quaesievis' etc., though the metre in either poet's hand is so charming to my ear that I have actually attempted it in English for a short poem -- e.g.,